Origin Seeker

After a bit of calming down, Dream had gotten them back on track.

They spent their lunch in the dorm and the entire time, the girls were trying to get out of him what he was doing that made him so weak and exhausted. Though he wasn't about to tell them that he was transfusing flux energy to increase the strength of Mithril, so he just told them he was doing his own workout to train his skills.

They could only accept his answer and move on with things. The girls ate food while Dream relaxed and soon they moved on to 4th period. 

Dream and Mara went off to healing, but Dream couldn't participate at all since he was still hurt. He articulated this to Merlin who had no problem and let him just recover. 

Dream followed them around and watched Mara help everybody. Though she constantly glanced at him, like she was making sure that he wasn't going anywhere. He felt a bit helpless seeing that.

[She's got bad abandonment issues. You disappearing seemed to hit her pretty hard.]

'Yea. It'll take a bit of time for her to stop worrying.'

He sighed but took it as him making up for getting carried away. Although, he would still need to do it again. 

What he and Sophia discovered was too important not to devote time to. He needed to study more and build more. Once he recovered, he was going back the next chance he could. And if that meant he would miss class, then he would miss class. If that meant he would have to leave them again, then he would. He would let them know first, but he would still leave. 

When healing class ended, Dream and Mara went to his dorm where Arrina had already arrived at. 

Although she was in the intermediate class now, Arrina still had a long way to go. Her training and studying continued while Dream and Mara had their own discussions.

After watching them for so long, Mara had come to be interested in manipulation. Having no reservations, Dream happily taught her and had her do the same things that Arrina did. Though she was able to do much more than Arrina. In fact, she already had some experience with manipulation through healing.

But her expertise was obviously far from Dream's, and he was soon able to find what she needed to work on. And so, Mara joined Arrina on the perilous road of manipulation. 

Dream was actually rather happy with this since he would be able to have time during the night to handle his own matters after they both knocked out. But at least for tonight, he could only rest. He actually went to bed early and told the girls to go easy on the workout so they could handle themselves. 

With that, he went to sleep, leaving the girls to their own thing.

.............

.......

When Dream woke up several hours later, he felt refreshed and sharp. His soul had healed, and like a muscle being worked out, had grown a bit. Though the difference was rather small. He would have to do that many more times to be able to see sizeable results. 

Another thing he noticed was the two girls in his bed, one at the foot and one next to him. 

'I thought I told them to take it easy.'

He sat up and looked at their disheveled states. Mara was cuddled in a ball next to him and Arrina was sprawled out like a drunk. According to Sophia, neither had heeded his advice and instead took it upon themselves to get a little comfortable.

Over this past week, they had been staying over at his dorm more than their own. He didn't remember the last time Arrina even went back to hers other than to change clothes.

After floating up and off of the bed, Dream walked to the bathroom and looked at himself in the full-body mirror. He took off his shirt and checked himself out a bit. 

"...Have you done some refinements?"

[I have. I usually mess with things while you sleep, further refining the enchantments and design.]

"Just casually messing with biology."

[Well, it's not really biology as it is cybernetics. And if you haven't inferred this already, I don't think we can consider you a proper human anymore. More like a bionic.]

"So instead of taking me farther down the evolutionary path, we pioneered a whole other species."

[You could say that. And its potential is much greater than a regular human's. Their bodies are weak and although they can adapt, especially with the help of mana, it doesn't solve the inherent problem that is weakness. But with you, we were able to. You're a true transhuman.]

"Am not trans, am not human."

[Fine. You're a true cybernetic anomaly. Better?]

"Eh. We'll need to work on naming my new species. Anyway, I don't really remember where we were when I collapsed at the factory. How had things come along?"

[I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I was able to gather lots of data on flux, and I've already began designing gear based on its properties. Though to really understand it, we'll need to see how flux interacts with materials besides Mithril. For example, steel.]

"Then that'll be the next thing we do. We should also see about automating this process, or at least making tools that ease my load. I'm willing to work out my soul, but we can't make the progress we want if I'm collapsing all the time."

[I've also begun solving that problem, so rest assured. Plus, all the level ups you got are going to help with that problem.]

"Oh, right. Status."

|Profile|

Name: Dream

Species: Human Male

Class: [Master Artificer]

Titles: [Origin Seeker]

Level: 155

Stats: Strength- B       Agility- B

Stamina- B-       Magic- B+

Passive Skills: [Sophia] Lvl. 65, [Magic] Lvl. 39

Active Skills: [Summons From Another World], [Material Magic] Lvl. 51

Dream looked over his info. Both of his Magic skills were at level 30 before. So Material Magic went up 21 levels while Magic went up only 9. Sophia also leveled up from 61 to 65. A pleasant surprise.

[Discovering and experimenting with flux really power leveled you.]

"I can see that. All the more reason to get back to working on that stuff. Now I just need to figure out when I'll be able to go."

"Go where?"

A voice suddenly came from behind Dream. He turned around as if already knowing she was there.

"Good morning Mara. Sleep well?"

"...I...Uhh..."

Mara stared blanky at Dream, who still had his shirt off. She thoroughly scanned his whole body for a bit until her face flushed. 

"What're you guys...doing..."

Arrina also came in from the bedroom, immediately setting her sight on the hunk of muscle in front of her. 

"Oh my god..."

"You can call me Dream."

"How...How did you do...that?"

Although her face was red, Arrina was overcome by curiosity. She had never seen such a developed body. 

"I built myself."

"...What does that mean?"

"Means what it does. Now stop staring before your faces blow up."

Dream had a bit of fun teasing them, to which they both huffed a bit before going to the kitchen. Dream laughed and threw on his classy-casual clothes he always wore before walking out.

"So what were you saying about going somewhere?"

After he sat down at the table and set out some food for them to eat, Mara questioned him. 

"I have projects and experiments and they require my attention. It's what I was doing when I disappeared. And unfortunately, it wasn't a one-time thing. So since I'm healed, I'm going to be finding time to continue. I'm just trying to think of the best time when."

"...What are these projects?"

"Weapons and gear development."

"...Can we come with you?"

"I don't think so. It's far away and it would take too much time to bring you guys. Not to mention that the stuff there is stuff I can't really have you see."

"What, you hiding slaves or something? Why can't we see?"

Arrina spoke up. They had asked several times, and Dream always gave similar answers. This only made them wonder more and also made them question how much he really trusted them. 

Dream understood this, but it wasn't something he could bend on. 

"No, I'm not hiding slaves. And you can't see because the information is too valuable. Look, I think I'm going to be getting on my own schedule pretty soon, if not now. I need to be spending time doing these projects, and the night hours when you guys sleep might not cut it."

"...Are you gonna be leaving us?"

"No, I'm not. I was thinking that from the time you guys went to sleep to lunch I'll be gone. All other times I'll be here."

"Won't you miss our sequencing classes?"

"I will, but that's lower on my priority list. And it's not like I don't have the book. You know what? I'll start that schedule tomorrow. Although even then its not like I'll be away for that long. You guys won't even be awake for most of it."

"But you will be awake. When will you sleep if you're going from one thing to the other?" (Mara)

"You let me worry about that. And hey, if you guys get strong enough in the future, maybe I'll let you in on what I'm doing. If you're really that curious, then there's a little motivation."

"Alright."

"...Fine."

Both girls nodded, and although Mara wasn't very happy about it, it was better than him being away while they were awake.

[Look at you, being all considerate.]

'Well, I didn't want to be too distant. Although it's mainly for Mara's sake. I pity her a bit.'

If he wanted to, there was nothing stopping Dream from ditching the academy and spending all his time developing his magitech. But he still did enjoy being around them and he wasn't that much of an asshole to just leave and never come back. 

"Speaking of, I'm actually going to be making you two some things. For my apology."

"What are you making?"

"Well I can't tell you that now can I? But don't worry, it's not going to be some crap."

"Oh, alright. Thanks."

"Sure. Now let's get to class."

..............

The three went through the day as they normally did. Arrina and Mara trained their manipulation during classes while Dream studied magic sequences from the books Riddick gave him.

At this point, Dream didn't care about learning with the class. The situation with the demons and their impending threat was growing, and although he still had time, it wasn't infinite. He needed to be ready to go there and begin fighting. And these sequences and their unique way of controlling mana could help him.

Though instead of cracking open all the books at once, Dream had Sophia refrain from reading the master level book, instead only reading intermediate and advanced. They went through everything together and hypothesized on many things while also performing many experiments. They switched, mixed, and used different languages along with their own to form the circles, and they sought to understand how exactly it controlled mana. But their experiments were a bit different than before, because they were now aware of the energy known as Flux.

Although it was difficult to sense its effects since they couldn't explode the magic circles, they still understood somewhat how it worked and attempted to factor it in. So they did, and their understanding of magic circles grew deeper. They saw different ways to enchant objects using the concepts from circles, and they were able to make more complex and deep configurations and programs. This would be especially helpful as they began to harness more massive amounts of mana and energy as well as try to affect smaller objects like atoms and such. 

So after the day passed and the girls fell asleep at night, Dream went back out to the facility.

When he got to the storage room, he found that it was reorganized. 

[I had the robots clean things up.]

"I see. So how did things go?"

[See for yourself.]

Sophia brought over several spheres of metal. 

[Out of the 40,000 pounds of metal that we started with, we were able to get through most of it and attain 1400 pounds of grade 7 Mithril.]

"So out of 100 pounds, we get 4 of Grade 7. 4% conversion rate."

[But we have lots of pounds and that number depends on what we get when we mine. More silver is being mined as we speak, and since two days ago, we've attained another 11 tons. Not to mention that I've devised more efficient ways to transfer flux and reduce losses/

"That's good. Although, we don't need to convert everything to grade 7. We can keep some at grade 6 and 5 since there will be more that way. But I guess it depends on what we plan to build."

[I've got plenty of plans, the top priority of which is a new gun and a new set of armor. Hehe, I'm excited.]

"I'm also excited. But before all that, let's test this flux transfer on other materials as you talked about before. Starting with steel."

Dream looked over and waved a few ingots of steel over, setting them down in front of him. 

Sophia took the metal and went to work. She formed two layers just like with the Mithril grades, and they exploded the metal.

*Boom*

[...]

"...So?"

[It's absorbing rather slowly. The flux doesn't seem to absorb as well in steel, or I should say Iron. Definitely different than the Silver that readily absorbed it.]

"So does that mean it won't really work?"

[Not necessarily. In fact, this can mean that should we develop a higher grade steel, it'll be tougher than Mithril at the same grade. It's the same situation with your body. Base steel is obviously much stronger than base silver, so if we get the same amounts of flux and mana for both, then the steel with come out on top in strength.]

"Sound logic. But it's looking like steel is going to be a bit more difficult than silver to enhance."

[Nothing great comes quickly, although we can try and accelerate the process. Like through compression.]

As she said that, the steel ball in front of him began to shrink. The depleted steel was taken out while the outer layer compressed, turning into a smaller ball. He could feel the mana absorption rate increase as this happened. And after a few minutes, the mana absorption stopped.

[Enhancement complete. We've confirmed that this process works, and now we just need to scale it and develop tools to make it efficient.]

"Good. Because we have lots of metal to go through."

Dream looked around the warehouse, seeing the massive amounts of ingots, steel sheets, and blocks. The amount of steel inside had increased from 400 tons to 700, and it would take months to go through everything if he had to do it himself.

[I've already prepared the tools and machines. We just need to enchant them and begin.]

"...I've got around 10 hours. Let's see how much I can make."

After he said that, dozens of ingots began to float over to him. It was time to get started.